Conflict Prevention

Angelina Jolie talks to actors during the filming of her yet directorial debut in Budapest on August 11, 2010 (Courtesy Reuters/Laszlo Balogh). In August, I wrote a review of the powerful and moving documentary, The Interrupters, which follows the work of Project CeaseFire, a grassroots organization that employs ex-gang members to attempt to mediate neighborhood disputes in Chicago before they turn violent. I wanted to share another movie that also deals with the ethical choices people make to try to survive in a conflict zone, In the Land of Blood and Honey, a fictionalized account of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. A conflict that is estimated to have cost 156,000 people their lives, with another 175,000 seriously injured or disabled. The movie has received strong attention in the press, no doubt because it was written and directed by Angelina Jolie. (Full disclosure: Jolie is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.) Overall, it succeeds as the rare example of harnessing star power to get a movie made about a difficult and rarely-remembered event, including with Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian actors speaking in their native dialects. Moreover, it does not require the viewer to recall what happened in the Balkans in the early 1990s, since the complexities of the civil war are distilled into a narrative focused on two people and set in one location: Sarejevo. The upside of this approach is that we can grasp and at times even sympathize with the difficult choices made by the actors. The downside is that by opting for an intimate and localized approach, the movie obviously cannot be a comprehensive and balanced account of the war. Yet, the film is a work of fiction and only 127 minutes long. What appears on screen is nevertheless recommended viewing for those interested in how combat impacts non-combatants, especially women who are targeted by regular army and paramilitary forces. Much like The Battle for Algiers and Dr. Strangelove are shown to students for their cinematic portrayal of counterinsurgencies and civil-military relations, In the Land of Blood and Honey should be screened to attempt to convey the use of sexual violence as a tool of war to depopulate civilian areas, and as an organizing principle for armed forces in detention centers. In a February 2001 ruling, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) set a new judicial precedent by convicting three Serbian men for enslavement and sexual violence as crimes against humanity. In many ways, this film is a tribute to that landmark decision. The civil war is told through the prism of a Serbian police officer (Danijel) and a Bosnian painter (Ajla) who were lovers before the war erupted. After the first indiscriminate attacks against civilians, ethnic communities that once lived together choose sides, or are forcibly displaced. The two are unexpectedly reconnected and their relationship develops in the tense environment of a Serb barracks/detention center for Bosnian Muslim women.  Daniel’s father is a general in the Serbian Army who wants is son to “do good work” by way of ethnic cleansing, while Ajla has friends in the Bosnian insurgency who want intelligence that can be used to target Serb forces. Their interactions are closely monitored, and both make micro-decisions with ostensibly macro-parallels, motivated by some combination of patriotism, resistance, and romance. The international community is also featured, and early on deserves a Best Un-Supporting Actor nomination. In one gripping early scene, a Bosnian woman’s infant son is killed by rampaging Serbian soldiers ordered to clear an apartment complex of its civilian inhabitants. The camera lingers above the woman while she kneels in a snow-filled empty courtyard holding her deceased boy and weeping loudly. The image is intended to convey that the Bosnian people are suffering and alone, while the world watches but and does little other than provide aid and endlessly debate UN Security Council resolutions (there would be fifty-five of them regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina.) There are numerous scenes depicting war crimes committed by Serbian armed forces: the repeated rape of Bosnian women; attacking a clearly marked Red Cross van with a rocket-propelled grenades; wearing a flak jacket clearly labeled “press;” using human shields in counterinsurgency operations; stationing a headquarters in culturally sensitive sites to avoid NATO airpower (as Danijel says “They’re not bombing churches, which works in our favor"); showing emaciated Bosnian men imprisoned in concentration camp settings; and the mass killing of captured Bosnian men. The film does not apportion suffering in amounts that reflect the reality of the Bosnian civil war. In fact, I could not recall a definitive example of a Bosnian Muslim committing a war crime. Bosnian insurgent forces are portrayed as thoughtful, scrappy, and resourceful. While this was undoubtedly true about elements of the Bosnian resistance in Sarajevo and elsewhere, it must be noted that the ICTY has also convicted Bosnian Muslims and Croats for war crimes perpetrated against Serbs. Moreover, the film does not show what happens on the battlefields outside of the capital city. In the winter of 1994, Danijel brags to Ajla: "We now control 80 percent if the territory." By that time, however, Iran was smuggling plane-loads of weapons to the Bosnian Army—with the Clinton administration’s tacit approval—in open violation of UN-mandated arms embargos (which Serb forces also violated). In addition, the American private military contractor, Military Professional Resources Incorporated, was sanctioned to train the Croatian military. By the summer of 1995, artillery fire from British, French, and Dutch forces, NATO air strikes, and a Croatian ground offensive (that displaced hundreds of thousands of Serbs) reduced the amount of territory controlled by the Serbs to 50 percent. When asked what was the most challenging aspect of making the film, Jolie answered: "Trying to find the balance in it. It is one of the most complicated conflicts to understand. I’ve studied it for years, and I’m still not sure I understand it." Years ago, I was fortunate to be a research assistant to two books that covered Balkans conflicts, and later serve as a contributor to the State Department’s Kosovo History Project. After being immersed in the complex issues and later following them from a distance, I never understood what the motivations or outcomes were for all parties to the conflicts. If nothing else, In the Land of Blood and Honey forced me to think about the acute suffering faced by local communities in civil wars, and the potential international responsibilities and requirements for responding to them.  

The eurozone and Saudi Arabia are elevated threats in 2012 under CFR’s new Preventive Priorities Survey, while Afghanistan and Sudan are reduced. CFR’s Micah Zenko discusses.

    A protester holds a tear gas canister, initially thrown by riot police near Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt on November 22, 2011 (Courtesy Reuters/Amr Dalsh).   This post originally appeared on TheAtlantic.com. In February, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned West Point cadets, "When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right." Similarly, when commander of U.S. Central Command General James Mattis was asked what missions American ground forces might undertake ten years into the future, he responded, "As we look toward the future I’ve been a horrible prophet. I have never fought anywhere I expected to in all my years." Such sentiments by senior officials, reinforced by the Arab Spring’s unexpected start and trajectory, reflects America’s dismal record at forecasting instability and conflicts abroad that are important to U.S. national interests. Indeed, presently there is no regular or systematic U.S. government process for the forecasting of potentially threatening developments that could arise, which is linked to contingency planning. The Center for Preventive Action’s annual Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) is intended to help overcome this shortcoming by harnessing expert opinion to inform the U.S. policy community about the relative urgency and importance of competing conflict prevention demands in 2012. We do this by developing a list of thirty plausible human-generated contingencies of relative importance to U.S. national interests, grouped according to levels or categories of risk associated with various types of instability or conflict into three tiers:                   Tier I: contingencies that could threaten the homeland, trigger U.S. military involvement because of treaty commitments, or threaten critical strategic resources. Tier II: contingencies in countries of strategic importance but which are non-treaty allies. Tier III: contingencies in countries of limited strategic importance, or in those where humanitarian consequences are likely to be severe or widespread.   The thirty contingencies were sent to a wide selection of over 300 government officials, policy analysts, academics, and journalists for their confidential feedback. Their insights led to a number of additions, subtractions, and refinements, based upon whether they believed the contingencies were more or less probable and severe in the coming year. Those changes are reflected in the PPS for 2012 below. In addition to the findings detailed in the PPS, respondents raised a number of other possible situations that were deemed less likely to occur and/or less critical for U.S national interests. Among those that were not included:                               popular uprisings in several countries, specifically in China, Russia, Jordan, and among Palestinians against the Palestinian Authority or Israel the assassination of a U.S. official that is attributed to a foreign national possible renewed unrest or ethnic conflict in Myanmar if the government’s promise of political reforms is not fulfilled the potential for civil war in Angola based on predictive indicators, such as the widespread availability of weapons, political unrest, and prior conflict unspecified natural or humanitarian disasters that would require a U.S. military response sudden and steep downturn in the Chinese real estate market that significantly limits economic growth in China and beyond   The PPS for 2012 differs in several important ways from the PPS for 2011. The contingencies that were introduced for the first time or elevated in terms of their relative importance and likelihood in 2012 were an intensification of the Eurozone crisis, acute political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers oil supplies, and further unrest in Bahrain that spurs further Saudi and/or Iranian military action. Contingencies that were lowered or dropped included a reversal of security and governance gains in Afghanistan, political instability and violence in Haiti, renewed military conflict between Russia and Georgia, and a military conflict between Sudan and the newly-formed South Sudan. Nobody could have foreseen that the slap of a Tunisian fruit vendor by a municipal inspector in Sidi Bouzid would trigger the political uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East that resulted in the collapse of the governments of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, and Muammar Qaddafi (so far). As Secretary Gates noted two months into NATO’s intervention in Libya, "If you’d asked me four months ago if we’d be in Libya today, I would have asked, ’What were you smoking?" However, given the inability to know what the trigger could be, it would be unreasonable to plan equally for contingencies everywhere given the competing priorities for the attention of senior policymakers and increasingly limited resources for attempting to prevent instability and armed conflict. The PPS provides a framework that policymakers, academics, journalists, and citizens can use when assessing the potential countries or issues that are most likely to dominate the headlines regarding U.S. foreign policy for 2012. ___________________________ U.S. Preventive Priorities for 2012 The Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) is intended to help inform the U.S. policy community about the relative urgency and importance of competing conflict prevention demands. The Center for Preventive Action asked a targeted group of government officials, academics, and experts to comment confidentially on a list of contingencies that could plausibly occur in 2012. The list of preventive priorities for the United States is grouped according to three tiers of relative importance to U.S. national interests, based on different levels or categories of risk associated with various types of instability and conflict. The preventive priorities within each tier are not listed in any order of priority or probability. Tier I are preventive priorities that directly threaten the U.S. homeland, are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement because of treaty commitments, or threaten the supplies of critical U.S. strategic resources. They include:                                               a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally a severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weapons/ICBM capability) a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces an Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response) a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, gas and oil, water supply, banking and finance, transportation, and emergency services) a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies a U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-dip U.S. recession and further limiting budgetary resources   Tier II are contingencies that affect countries of strategic importance to the United States but that do not involve a mutual-defense treaty commitment. They include:                                               political instability in Egypt with wider regional implications a severe Indo-Pak crisis that carries risk of military escalation, triggered by major terror attack rising tension/naval incident in the eastern Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Israel a major erosion of security and governance gains in Afghanistan with intensification of insurgency or terror attacks an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Syria, with potential outside intervention an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Yemen rising sectarian tensions and renewed violence in Iraq a South China Sea armed confrontation over competing territorial claims a mass casualty attack on Israel growing instability in Bahrain that spurs further Saudi and/or Iranian military action   Tier III are contingencies that could have severe/widespread humanitarian consequences but in countries of limited strategic importance to the United States.  They include:                                               military conflict between Sudan and South Sudan heightened political instability and sectarian violence in Nigeria increased conflict in Somalia, with continued outside intervention political instability in Venezuela surrounding the October 2012 elections or post-Chavez succession political instability in Kenya surrounding the August 2012 elections renewed military conflict between Russia and Georgia an intensification of political instability and violence in Libya violent election-related instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo political instability/resurgent ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan an outbreak of military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, possibly over Nagorno Karabakh  

The Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS) is intended to help inform the U.S. policy community about the relative urgency and importance of competing conflict prevention demands. The Center for Preventive Action asked a targeted group of government officials, academics, and experts to comment confidentially on a list of contingencies that could plausibly occur in 2012.

A view of the street after a violent clashes between Libyan interim government forces and loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte on October 18, 2011 (Esam Al-Fetori/Courtesy Reuters). I have a piece featured today on Foreignpolicy.com that contributes to the debate on the future of humanitarian intervention in the wake of the NATO-led intervention in Libya. Specifically, the debate participants all considered the effect of Qaddafi’s removal from power on the emerging concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). My contribution addressed an understudied, unintended consequence of the broadening international acceptance and demonstrable enforcement of R2P: given that nuclear weapons are the only reliable means of deterrence for a conventional military intervention targeting regime change, R2P could serve as an incentive for authoritarian regimes to pursue the bomb. Many proponents of R2P misuse the term as a catchall for actions by a sovereign nation that put its civilian population at risk. Some advocates go further and contend that R2P includes a binding legal requirement to militarily intervene in a country that intentionally harms its own people. In order to clear up any misconceptions, it is useful to quickly review the definition of R2P, and what that definition means and does not mean for the international community. The legal mandate and formal guidance for R2P is found in three core agreements and reports: - World Summit Outcome, September 15, 2005. “Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it.” - Report of the Secretary General, “Implementing the responsibility to protect,” January 12, 2009. - Report of the Secretary General, “Early warning, assessment and the responsibility to protect,” July 14, 2010. Of the three documents, the 2009 report outlines the main framework of the R2P and presents a three pillar strategy, with the caveat that “there is no set sequence to be followed from one pillar to another, nor is it assumed that one is more important than another.” “It is the enduring responsibility of the State to protect its populations, whether nationals or not, from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and from their incitement.” “It is the commitment of the international community to assist States in meeting those obligations…which could entail confidential or public suasion, education, training and/or assistance.” “It is the responsibility of Member States to respond collectively in a timely and decisive manner when a State is manifestly failing to provide such protection.” This can include peaceful persuasion, targeted diplomatic and economic sanctions, and arms embargoes. In addition, “no strategy for fulfilling the responsibility to protect would be complete without the possibility of collective enforcement measures, including through sanctions or coercive military action in extreme cases.” It is important to understand that within the three pillar strategy, military force is only one of the “timely and decisive” tools at the disposal of the international community, which must be authorized by the Security Council. Moreover, the third pillar does not explicitly endorse regime change as the objective of military force in R2P interventions, but rather to protect populations from the four specified crimes and violations listed in the first pillar. My fellow debater, Gareth Evans, poses a thought provoking question on the future application of R2P: in the case of intervention to stop atrocities, is it all or nothing? Although sovereignty does not confer impunity on government to do whatever it wishes within its territory, R2P does not allow the international community free reign to use military force to implement and enforce the third pillar. Rather, force is only to be exercised as an option of last resort in “extreme cases” to protect the civilian population, not to remove the offending regime.

White House senior advisor Jarrett, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Rice and U.S. Secretary of State Clinton listen as U.S. President Obama speaks at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2010 (Jason Reed/Courtesy Reuters) Today, Paul Stares and I published our latest Council Special Report (CSR), Partners in Preventive Action: The United States and International Institutions. It compliments our earlier report, Enhancing U.S. Preventive Action. With the U.S. military overstretched after a decade of continuous combat operations and the U.S. government $14.7 trillion in debt, the strategic logic of preventive action to reduce foreign crises and conflicts that could embroil the United States in burdensome new commitments has never been more compelling. Instead of unilateral or informal action, cooperation with international institutions and regional organizations—such as the United Nations (UN), African Union, European Union (EU), and Organization of American States, among others—offers important strategic and operational benefits to the United States. First, these institutions provide an unparalleled international platform for formalizing, extending, and at times enforcing rules, norms, and regimes that regulate state behavior. Second, they confer an important source of legitimacy on diplomatic efforts initiated or supported by the United States. Finally, they significantly increase the pool of available resources, such as valuable information on and access into parts of the world that the United States cannot obtain independently. In the report, we recommend a series of measures whereby the United States can enhance the effectiveness of leading international and regional institutions, namely: The United States should help the UN and leading regional institutions carry out early warning analysis of instability and potential armed conflicts. The U.S. intelligence community should collaborate—particularly with the EU—to produce assessments of areas of potential instability in order to prioritize policymakers’ near-term contingency planning. The United States should increase its financial assistance to the UN and regional organizations for activities that help to prevent conflict. While assistance to regular budgets is often lost in underperforming institutions, “voluntary funding on a competitive basis” through the State Department’s international affairs budget can support specific preventive programs. In an effort to prevent conflicts that could require further military commitments and an increased financial burden, enhanced cooperation with international institutions has become a foreign policy priority of the Obama administration. As President Obama stated in April 2010: "It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure." This commitment is further mandated by the government’s relevant strategic guidance documents: "This [conflict prevention] requires enhanced coordination among the United Nations, regional organizations, international financial institutions, specialized agencies, and other actors that are better placed or equipped to manage certain threats and challenges.” National Security Strategy "The United States needs to guide continued adaptation of existing international institutions and alliances and to support development of new institutions appropriate to the demands of the 21st century. This will not happen without global confidence in American leadership, its political, economic, and military strength, and steadfast national purpose.” Quadrennial Defense Review "We will enhance our capabilities to act regionally and to shape regional institutions so that we can more effectively cooperate with allies and partners to deliver results and, where necessary, manage disagreements…We will put ourselves on a footing to reform and reshape international institutions—both formal and informal—so they are effectively equipped to handle the challenges of the 21st century.” Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review Conflict prevention is inherently challenging; hard to do, and harder to prove. However, it is both strategically and morally imperative for the U.S. government to make every effort to live up to its mandate. Aptly summarized by Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in May 2011: “The reason I’ve been in the military in my whole life is try to prevent wars…I think that is a noble goal that all of us should seek, to end wars and prevent wars as much as possible.”

Pakistani soldier Rasheed holds a rocket launcher while standing in a bunker on a mountain in Sadda on July 6, 2010 (Mian Khursheed/Courtesy Reuters). In his 2006 autobiography, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claimed that after 9/11, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Musharraf’s intelligence chief that if his country did not cooperate in fighting Al Qaeda, the United States would bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age.” Armitage denied that he ever made such a coercive threat, however, and an account of the meeting made by a State Department staffer reportedly confirmed his version of events. Nevertheless, successive U.S. military and intelligence officials have visited Islamabad to convey similar warnings. In May 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year old Pakistani-born American citizen failed in his attempt to detonate a crude car bomb in Times Square. Under questioning, Shahzad admitted that he had received explosives training in an Al Qaeda-affiliated Pakistani terror camp. Two weeks after the failed Times Square plot, national security adviser, General James Jones, and director of central intelligence, Leon Panetta, were dispatched to Islamabad to deliver a message from President Obama to Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. According to the account revealed in the new book by New York Times journalists, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda: “Obama’s warning to Kayani that his military that he needed to clamp down on the Islamic fighters, who were using safe havens inside his country, or pay the price of devastating American air strikes, was yet another example of how the U.S. government was adopting classic Cold War notions of deterrence to protect the United States against terrorists. The message was clear: If we are attacked, you will be attacked.” Despite the reported recent killing of Al Qaeda’s second ranking official, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, by a CIA drone strike, Pakistan’s tribal areas (and Yemen) remain a potential origin for a mass-casualty terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland. The latest State Department Country Reports on Terrorism: 2010 report, released on August 21, states: “Despite efforts by Pakistani security forces, al-Qa’ida (AQ) terrorists, Afghan militants, foreign insurgents, and Pakistani militants continued to find safe haven in portions of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Khyber Paktunkhwa (KPK), and Baluchistan. AQ and other groups such as the Haqqani Network used Pakistani safe havens to launch attacks in Afghanistan, plan operations worldwide, train, recruit, and disseminate propaganda.” I highly recommend reading a new Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Stephen Tankel, “A Pakistan-based Terrorist Attack on the U.S. Homeland,” which assesses the policy tools the U.S. officials should employ to prevent such an attack, as well as mitigate the consequences if one were to occur. Tankel proposes that Obama administration officials increase efforts to build counterterrorism capacity among Pakistan’s civilian law enforcement and intelligence agencies, restructure how the United States provides aid and reimbursements to the Pakistan’s military, and develop a campaign plan that accounts for a range of responses in the event of an attack on the U.S. homeland. In a time of increasingly strained relations between the U.S. and Pakistan, the Obama administration should be prepared for all contingencies.

Libya's leader Qaddafi listens to Venezuelan President Chavez during the plenary session at the Africa-South America Summit on Margarita Island (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Courtesy Reuters). Today, I have an analytical and satirical piece in ForeignPolicy.com: “The Dictator’s Survival Guide.” Based on the world’s reactions to the Arab Spring – or Arab Transition, the term of art used by some U.S. intelligence analysts – it provides seven lessons for dictators who face popular uprisings and possible foreign military intervention. Although Muammar Qaddafi remains at large, the one common thread in the comments, op-eds, and editorials published over the past two days is that the western intervention into Libya’s civil war “worked.” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, declared, “This is precisely the way that we had been saying the strategy was supposed to work.” He added, “we were more than able to sustain the pressure for six months, and frankly, would have been able to for many more months to come." Suddenly, the joyful images of Libyans celebrating in Tripoli have invalidated any previous critiques of the NATO-led military campaign. Like the images of Northern Alliance fighters sweeping into Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in November 2001, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Fidros Square in Baghdad in April 2003, or President George W. Bush’s speech before a red-white-and-blue “Mission Accomplished” banner in May 2003, such moments of “victory” are captivating and memorable. As a result, the complex political and military mistakes made before such short-lived celebrations are often forgotten. As the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan faltered in President Bush’s second term, “regime change” became dirty words. In particular, see this 2005 piece in Foreign Affairs by CFR President Richard Haass: “Regime Change and its Limits.” If more and more analysts and policymakers believe that the costs and likely consequences for regime change “worked” in Libya, it is increasingly likely that we will see calls for a similar application of force in an effort to topple dictators elsewhere. For satirical strategic advice on how those autocrats can survive, read here.

An aerial view of downtown Chicago is seen from Air Force One July 6, 2006 (Jason Reed/Courtesy Reuters). I want to highly recommend a new documentary film, “The Interrupters,” which provides a gripping account of conflict prevention and mediation as practiced on a personal level in inner-city Chicago. With 300 hours of film shot over fourteen months, the documentary follows the travails of three members of Project CeaseFire, a grassroots non-governmental organization that employs ex-gang members to attempt to mediate neighborhood disputes before they turn violent. The film is a collaboration of Steve James, director and producer of the brilliant 1994 basketball documentary "Hoop Dreams," and Alex Kotlowitz, author of the May 2008 New York Times Magazine article, “Blocking the Transmission of Violence,” which served as the source material for the film. In that article, Kotlowitz explores the ideas developed by Project CeaseFire’s founder, epidemiologist Gary Slutkin. After years of working to halt the spread of tuberculosis, cholera, and AIDS in San Francisco and throughout Africa, Slutkin discovered that street violence is a learned behavior that mimics the spread of infectious diseases. Just as trying to mitigate the outbreak of a disease after transmission does not work and is much more costly than prevention, Slotkin believes that more intensive policing and longer prison sentences were doing nothing to prevent the proliferation of homicides in U.S. cities. With a preventive approach, the Violence Interrupters attempt to tackle a specific “disease”—namely the idea that it is acceptable to use violence to resolve grievances. They do this through patrolling Chicago’s streets to speak directly with gang members, drug dealers, and families of victims who are on the verge of attacking someone out of revenge, or in retaliation for a perceived showing of disrespect. Their methods require that the interrupters listen and empathize with how gang members think, while also being confrontational when necessary to stop a likely imminent shooting. At one moment we see a violence interrupter laid up in a hospital bed after he was shot in the back in an unsuccessful effort to deescalate tensions at a crime scene. On a broader level, Project CeaseFire also tries to transform local norms about violence, through outreach to young children and leading protest marches in post-conflict communities. Because of the intimate access that was provided to the filmmakers, some parts of “The Interrupters” are difficult to watch. Fascinatingly, as the violence is so common, it is also highly ritualized: there are wrenching scenes of funeral speeches, family fights that turn ugly, and innumerable makeshift memorials of stuffed animals, signed cards, and liquor bottles that sprout up at each murder site and then decay as the seasons change. In one small but memorable moment, we see a shrine on a brick wall at the Atgeld Gardens housing project that contains rows and rows of names of violence victims. The camera pans to one brick that simply reads: “I am next.” In another, a funeral director describes the alarming frequency with which he buries young people and how the survivors identify with and even pose with their friend lying in the coffins during ceremonies. The movie doesn’t spend time on details, such as how much Dr. Slutkin’s approach costs versus other community-based programs, where Project CeaseFire get its funding (the State of Illinois and the Department of Justice), and, most importantly, is effectiveness. According to a 2008 Department of Justice evaluation of CeaseFire, in areas where the project was active there was a 41-73% drop in shootings and killings. Ultimately, however, “The Interrupters” is not about monitoring and evaluating a social program, but following people who care and hope to create a more peaceful community in ones where happy endings are few and far between. See “The Interrupters” this fall. You won’t have an experience over two hours and five minutes that persists as long in your mind and makes you think about the enduring problem of violence in America.

New efforts by the Obama administration to prioritize the prevention of atrocities can only make a difference if authorities are able to surmount challenges ranging from bureaucratic inertia to fickle public opinion, write Andrew Miller and Paul Stares.

As ethno-political violence continues in Pakistan’s financial capital, Pakistani analyst Mosharraf Zaidi says the city needs a more effective police force and judicial system, which in turn will engender investor confidence globally.